People Search

Exa’s people search lets you search over 1B+ professional profiles using natural language. The index is refreshed weekly and combines semantic search with structured attributes such as role, skill, company, location, and seniority. Read the blog post: Introducing Exa’s People Search Benchmarks

For agentic list-building and enrichment out of the box, use Websets →.

When to Use

If you’re building:

A recruiting or talent-sourcing platform
- Search candidates by role, skill set, location, or employer
- “senior ML engineers in Seattle with PyTorch experience”
- “full-stack developers with React and Node.js”
A GTM intelligence or sales prospecting tool
- Find decision-makers and buying-committee members at target accounts
- “VP Engineering at Series B fintech companies”
- “enterprise sales reps from Salesforce in EMEA”
A professional services or consulting workflow
- Map leadership and org charts at companies you’re researching for clients
- “CTO at fintech startups in New York”
An AI SDR or outbound agent
- Enrich prospect lists with up-to-date titles, companies, and career context
- “product managers at Microsoft”

Basic Usage

curl -X POST https://api.exa.ai/search \
  -H "x-api-key: $EXA_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "query": "CEO of AI search startups in San Francisco",
    "category": "people",
    "type": "auto",
    "numResults": 10
  }'

from exa_py import Exa

exa = Exa()

results = exa.search(
    "CEO of AI search startups in San Francisco",
    category="people",
    type="auto",
    num_results=10
)

import Exa from "exa-js";

const exa = new Exa();

const results = await exa.search(
  "CEO of AI search startups in San Francisco",
  {
    category: "people",
    type: "auto",
    numResults: 10,
  }
);

Structured Entity Metadata

People Search returns structured person metadata in entities for result rows that resolve to a person. Each person entity has type: "person", a stable id, a schema version, and a properties object with person profile fields.

{
  "results": [
    {
      "title": "Jane Doe - VP Engineering",
      "url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/janedoe",
      "entities": [
        {
          "id": "person_...",
          "type": "person",
          "version": 1,
          "properties": {
            "name": "Jane Doe",
            "firstName": "Jane",
            "lastName": "Doe",
            "location": "San Francisco, California, United States",
            "workHistory": [
              {
                "title": "VP Engineering",
                "location": "San Francisco, California, United States",
                "dates": { "from": "2022-01-01", "to": null },
                "company": { "id": "company_...", "name": "Example AI" }
              }
            ],
            "educationHistory": [
              {
                "degree": "BS Computer Science",
                "dates": { "from": "2010", "to": "2014" },
                "institution": { "id": null, "name": "Stanford University" }
              }
            ]
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Try it now: People Search in the API Playground →

API

Data

MCP

SDKs

Integrations

Admin

Additional Resources

People Search

When to Use

Basic Usage

Structured Entity Metadata

​When to Use

​Basic Usage

​Structured Entity Metadata

When to Use

Basic Usage

Structured Entity Metadata